Books

Caroline Kennedy's Gun-qualified

The lamestream media told you:

Caroline Kennedy, who lacks any serious credentials to replace Hillary Clinton as a senator from New York, nevertheless seeks the seat, has a good chance of securing it because after all she's rich, famous, good looking, a relative of a highly regarded political family and would probably be a good senator.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

In the news reports of Caroline Kennedy's aspirations to be a Senator, several reporters have noted that her qualifications include being a "Constitutional lawyer" who "wrote a book about Constitutional law."

A close attorney friend who prefers to remain anonymous happens to have that book: In Our Defense, The Bill of Rights in Action (Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy, 1991, William Morrow & Co.). He bought it (autographed by both Alderman and Kennedy) for $2 at a used book sale. Here is something Constitutional scholars Alderman and Kennedy had to say about the Second Amendment, on page 100:

"Under the controlling authority of the only Supreme Court case to address the scope of the Second Amendment, U.S. v. Miller, the court concluded that 'the right to keep and bear handguns is not guaranteed by the Second Amendment.'"

The quote is from Quilici v. Morton Grove heard in the U.S. 7th Circuit Court. The book's discussion of our right to keep and bear arms rests on an examination of the 1982 Morton Grove gun ban, an act by a small town, supported by courts, that denied its citizens rights they had always had beforehand.

That lower-court episode is considered by gun-rights advocates as one of the worst blots on the Second Amendment, but Kennedy and Alderman saw it as a proper stage to examine the issue. It would be hard to characterize their position as anything but hostile to the idea that mere citizens have the right to defend themselves with sidearms. The quotation the authors hinge their discussion upon is completely disparaging of a citizen's right to have or use handguns.

For the record, the court was wrong in saying Miller was the only case to address the scope of the Second Amendment, and that case makes no mention of handguns (it concerned bootleggers transporting a sawed-off shotgun across state lines), but why let such petty details stand in the way of gun-rights-hating lower courts or authors who use that infringement decision to frame your freedoms under the Bill of Rights.

The "news" media has failed so far to note any of this, while falling all over itself to praise the pretty blonde lady made in Camelot.

About the Author

Freelance writer Alan Korwin is a founder and past president of the Arizona Book Publishing Association. With his wife Cheryl he operates Bloomfield Press, the largest producer and distributor of gun-law books in the country. Here writing as "The Uninvited Ombudsman," Alan covers the day's stories as they ought to read. Read more.